


What Makes A Family

by joufancyhuh



Series: To Know A Vael [7]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Experimental style writing, Gen, Hi yes Leandra is not a good mom and I will die on this soapbox, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Yikes, how the hawke family grieves, major character death being Malcolm's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 08:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18587104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joufancyhuh/pseuds/joufancyhuh
Summary: Malcolm Hawke dies. The family grieves.





	What Makes A Family

**Author's Note:**

> It started with the first sentence, and spiraled into this. But it is a curious thing, how my naive, bright eyed Hawke from Ashes to Ashes becomes who she is in To Know A Vael. So I wrote this, and hopefully that bridges the gap. Also I've never really showed her relationship with Bethany much.

A storm, the likes of which never seen, erupted the day Malcolm Hawke died.

For two solid weeks, it raged, as if the Maker himself cried over the death of the man. The water turned the ground into rivers, causing floods that wiped out crops and washed away livestock. With help from the ghastly winds, trees fell, roots ripped from the softened dirt to fall on houses or in paths.

And then it stopped, as quickly as it began, though the clouds lingered on, threatening to finish Lothering off with one last grandiose display of power.

That day, when the storm finally halted its destruction of the small village, the eldest Hawke left her siblings and her mother and disappeared. No one connected the events, too busy praising the Maker while simultaneously praying for the sunshine to return and dry up the ground, to begin anew their crops and to rebuild.

In fact, no one paid much attention to the Hawke family at all, which is how they preferred it.

 

* * *

Malcolm Hawke, as most parents, swore not to have a favorite child. But if you asked his wife, she said it was the eldest. And if you asked the twins, they agreed, though that fact harbored no ill will between the siblings.

Ka-lea, originally meant to be named Ma-lea, a combination of Malcolm and Leandra’s names, an expression of their love for one another. But at the last second, Malcolm changed the name to Kalea, as though hoping more for her life than his own, as if erasing himself from her name might extinguish his half of her bloodline.

But her magic blossomed despite his precaution, and his love for her with it, as did his worry and concern for her safety and wellbeing. Out in the fields behind their house, he taught her the intricacies of magic and how to control it. _Magic_ , he said, _is like fire in that once it’s born, it quickly spreads and consumes if one is not careful in its maintenance._

So she learned, his star pupil, though she struggled to maintain her emotions, to keep feelings in check when exercising her talents. Where Bethany struggled to create, Kalea struggled to control. When angered, fire shot up around her or ice coated objects closest to her. In her tantrums, the ground shook beneath her feet as she stomped them. And when she let her sadness consume her, it stormed.

 

* * *

“Don’t blame yourself. You did the best you could.” Bethany rubbed circles into her sister’s back as Kalea buried her face into a pillow. Outside, the thunder rumbled as the rain continued to pour. The fields around their small home turned into a swamp of mud and water, leaving the grieving family stuck inside to carp and pick at one another, the close quarters proving too much in the absence of Malcolm. Kalea kept to her room, or more specifically, her bed, refusing to leave it most days, her body in a state of constant tired while her heart ached so hard that it left her short of breath. Only Bethany saw her, the same way she saw her mother, also locked in the dark of her room as she continuously wept.

“You’re the only one who thinks that,” Kalea’s muffled reply came as she kept her back to her sister. And she meant it, too. If only she tried harder to find a cure for her father’s illness, if only she didn’t give up and come home when she heard he got worse. To sit at his bedside day after day and watch the vibrant man she loved more than anyone diminish into a skeleton with sagging skin who coughed blood into rags and whose hands shook if he tried to lift them. And now her family needed her and she… she couldn’t function.

“They’re hurting, just as you are.” Bethany bent down to kiss her sister’s tear-stained cheek. “I know they pick on you and say awful things, but we’re all hurting. Dad would want us to get along, to find some way to move on. He said as much, didn’t he?”

“Bethie, you’re on the wrong side of this argument.” Kalea’s words came out as a whoosh of breath, then she leaned her head back to meet her sister’s brown eyes, that shone bright with their own sadness. “But I appreciate you.”

That earned her a soft smile, Bethany’s hand leaving Kalea’s back to come up and brush some stuck strands of hair away from her forehead. “If I make you food, will you promise to try and eat this time? For me?”

The thought of putting anything in her stomach made it churn, nausea bubbling up her throat. “Go see Mom,” she said instead. “She needs your sunshine more than I do. You know Carver’s no good at comfort.”

Bethany sighed, something she did a lot these days, then rose to her feet. “I’ll come back and check on you again soon. Try and get some rest, Kal.”   


* * *

 

After a month, the eldest Hawke returned to the house with bottles and bottles of alcohol stored in her pack, drunk and stumbling through the door. This lead to a bitter argument between herself and her mother and brother, with her sister trying her damndest to keep the peace. The argument resembled the one that sent her away, when her mother demanded she support the family since she ruined it with her inadequacy.

Thus began their new way of life. Though Kalea started taking odd jobs to bring income into the family, she often returned late in the night, if she returned at all, the stench of liquor wafting off her breath, the scent of sex stained into her marked skin. The coin went to Leandra, who kept up appearances of holding the house to order while falling apart herself, leaving Bethany and Carver to cook and clean while she shut herself up in her room.

When the twins turned sixteen in the following months, Carver joined the army and left the house, once and for all. He kept in contact with only Leandra by letter until he showed up at their door one night, years later, out of breath with panic in his eyes.

This time, Lothering never recovered from what followed. Neither did the Hawke family.


End file.
